Big Brains, Small Impact

By RUSSELL JACOBY

20 years ago, the author chided his peers for their academic
insularity. They roared in outrage. Of course, no one heard
them.

Twenty years ago, I published The Last Intellectuals: American
Culture in the Age of Academe, which put into circulation the term
"public intellectual." I offered a generational explanation for
what I saw as the eclipse of younger intellectuals. Why in 1987 had
the same intellectuals dominated for more than 20 years, with few
new faces among them? Why was it